In his speech, Prof. Miller provides an extended and stimulating overview of migrants’ home-making through his research findings, across continents, over the last decades. Ethnographic case studies of migration from Trinidad, Jamaica, the Philippines and China are used to stimulate a critical debate on all facets of migrants’ complex home experience – in proximity, and from a distance; offline, and online.

Key topics in Danny’s lecture include material culture and the study of home interiors as markers of boundaries between inside and outside, permanency and transiency, as well as of immigrant patterns of integration; the elusive significance of migrants’ “remittance houses”, and the ultimate meanings of their homecoming; the delicate balance, and possibly the tradeoffs, between migrant disadvantaged dwelling conditions “offline”, and the dwellings they dream of, and decorate, online.